Google likes to remind us of what we were doing this time last year, and often we’re taken back to delightful moments we’d forgotten about and if the reminiscence is two or three years ago we really wonder, did we really do that?. Yesterday, if Google had gone back several decades before it was invented, 57 years in fact, it would have recorded that I was at the opening season of the New National Theatre at the Old Vic, seeing Peter O’Toole as Hamlet. It was an ‘A ‘Level trip and the drama continued as the bus took us down Fleet Street where the newspaper offices used to be and the billboards were proclaiming that President Kennedy had been shot. If Google delivers a dose of nostalgia next year with the headline, ‘What were you doing this time last year?’, the answer will be fairly easy to recall – the same as the day before, and the day before that.
Adventures are rather tame at present. Today a niece sent us a video of snowyaking –that is careering down alpine pistes in kayaks and hurtling into the water below. The snow element had more allure than the kayak element for me –I have twice spent time upside down in fast running water, trapped in a spray deck and with my head banging against a rock and found that it has had limited appeal. Kayaks on snow definitely were more attractive. For Deirdre, the appeal of being strapped in a blood-wagon and towed at ridiculous speeds to a medical centre at the base of the mountain has grown a bit worn with over-familiarity. My immediate reaction to the film was that I would love to do that. There was that tiny blip of an adrenalin flow, a minute nudge of dopamine in the brain that bounced me to my feet to show Deirdre the film and plan our next adventure. But a pull in the back and a creak of the shoulders reminded me that I had done some yoga yesterday and weeding today and if ever I had been an adrenalin junkie I’m now more of a cold turkey. It was very kind of the niece to send the film, but if she thought we might go for it, she clearly hasn’t seen us lately.
All these creaks and stabs, tendencies to fall over, get dizzy and suffer bladder issues in cold weather limit the Experience Gifts that we can buy each other. Deirdre is inclined to look
askance at a chance to drive a British Army tank or do indoor sky-diving. A couple of years back a gin tasting was successful though not terribly conducive to adrenaline rushes.
Our most adventurous outing of late was to Aldi followed by a grand climax at B&M. If we expected to leave civilization behind and fight for survival with Covid impervious warriors, we were disappointed. Everything was very courteous, well managed and productive. It strikes me how attractive everyone looks with their masks on. People’s eyes all look beautiful and we are beginning to rely on eyes to communicate. I’m tending to fall in love with bag ladies and traffic wardens. Mouths can’t always be trusted, but wistful brown eyes, or merry dancing eyes all tell a true story. We don’t really need the bottom halves of our faces at all, they often let us down. So no one could fully appreciate my winning festive smile beneath my mask or the apologetic grimace as I got in their way guarding the trolley. I’m not sure if they understood much from my eyes either if they tried to read them beneath the greasy misted up glasses. But I did buy an anti-bacterial screen cleaning kit, so tonight I can actually read what I’ve been writing.